This application relates to a lifting device for a motor vehicle. More particularly this invention concerns an apparatus for lifting and holding an automotive vehicle in a self-parking garage or the like.
Application Ser. No. 553,733 describes an automatic subterranean parking garage that is located beneath a sidewalk extending along a vehicular road. The inlet and outlet for the garage is on the road pavement itself and normally covered by a horizontal roller door. Beneath this door is provided a lift shaft in which the load platform of a vertical conveyor can be moved between the level of the pavement and a subterranean parking level.
Furthermore in accordance with this present invention the operations of the garage are automatically controlled by inserting a data carrier, such as a punched card or the like, into a control post which transmits parking and retrieving commands to the parking system of the garage.
If a car is to be parked according to my earlier application the requisite data carrier is inserted into the control post and this results in immediate opening of the door, exposing the platform of the vertical conveyor. The car is then driven onto this platform, the operator leaves the vehicle and again inserts the data carrier into the control post. In response to this second insertion, the automatic parking system lowers the platform and vehicle to the parking level while closing the roller door. On reaching the level the vehicle will be engaged by the load-gripping device which moves over the platform and removes the vehicle therefrom to transport it to a free parking space on the level which was preselected by insertion of the data carrier into the control post. When the vehicle is to be retrieved, the above sequence of operations is carried out in reverse, again automatically.
Application Ser. No. 553,733 further describes an embodiment of the garage for accommodating large numbers of vehicles, e.g., to be located beneath a large roadway, beneath a playground or the like. In such a case where a single-row parking level such as is described above will not offer a sufficient number of parking spaces, my garage is of the multi-row construction.
In accordance with this arrangement described in my earlier application the functional principle is, of course the same except that the load-gripping device reaches the different parking rows of the garage by being suspended from travelling ceiling cranes, or by means of inserted transversely travelling ceiling cranes working along and in front of the parking rows to transport the load-gripping devices from one row to the other.